Chasing Shadows
by Razzaroo
Summary: "The satisfaction comes from the completion of the work itself, in the knowledge that he's fulfilled orders, that he's living for a purpose, even if that does mean living to eliminate someone else's enemies. Not anymore. He feels sick and hollow because Creed took that purpose and he twisted it and mangled it to make Kranz his own." [Follow up to House of Bones.]
1. this kind of life

**A/N. I...well. I don't think I've ever written something quite like this before. It was meant to be a lot different but, like all things, it evolved. Kranz, son, I'm sorry. This is gonna be a little two parter thing and I will say now, the next part will hint at past sexual assault; nothing graphic but I just wanted to warn you.**

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He hates trains. He hates the sound of them; he hates the smell of them; he hates the feel of them rumbling and roaring beneath him. He hates how the windows shake and doors rattle and the brakes squeal. He hates how the lights buzz and the doors open with a sad sigh and how the people on them seem like distant objects, items trapped behind glass, artefacts in a museum that he can look at but never touch.

Kranz sighs and leans his head back, reaching into his jacket to grasp at Mars. It's been months since Creed was toppled on that island, since he'd watched the man who'd called himself a god burst in a cloud of blood and bone over the sea, and he still doesn't feel right. He's picked up work with a group who track down and eliminate Creed's former supporters, picking them off one by one. It should make him feel liberated, more triumphant; ridding the world of people who helped collapse Chronos, who enabled his own imprisonment and torture, should make him feel something. But there's nothing. It doesn't replace the tetchy feeling of paranoia that eats at the back of his brain and makes him check every cupboard and crook for shadows before he sleeps; it doesn't replace the memories that come when he least expects it; it doesn't stop the nightmares coming, as vivid and sharp as memory, twisted and made worse in dreaming.

He takes out the slip of paper his orders are written on. Everything is detailed to the letter, right down to the stations he needs to get on and off the train. He'd boarded at Glasdell, a tiny town, for the inter city train; two stations on, his target, a slimy creature named Adair, will board his own private carriage; two stations after that, Kranz is to make his way there and assassinate Adair and his travelling party, with the strict instruction that no civilian is to be harmed. When it's done, Kranz is to leave; disembarking at the ruins of Les Ses Leura's station, which still operates despite the Apostles' destruction of the city.

It should be easy enough. But what then?

At home, he keeps a list. It's just a list of jobs he needs to pick up; a politician who'd backed Creed to the hilt here, a business owner who'd rustled up their funds there, some military officers who'd tortured prisoners god knows where. It's not a long list and it's progressively getting shorter. He'll keep doing his jobs until…until what? Until he goes blind again? He has no way of knowing if and when that will happen. Until someone finally bests him at his own game? He can't see that happening too soon. Until he finds himself wanting to die?

Well, if that's the case, it's a wonder he even started.

He stands when the train lurches and hisses to a stop, making his way along the narrow carriages, towards the front. He can see Adair on the platform, red hair dotted with silver, standing with a sour-faced woman who can only be his wife.

He hates them both.

When the train pulls forward again, he steps across the coupling and onto Adair's carriage, not noticing the door closing behind him over the roar of the engine and the god awful clattering rattle of the wheels. There are blackout curtains draped against the door, blocking the view inside. Kranz twists the handle (_the lock is broken and he knows this because his employer broke it himself, right in front of him.)_

"You're late," Adair says, and he doesn't even look round. He gestures to the guards standing behind him, "These two have been here and had their fun. Where have you been?"

One of the men glances back and the smile on his face makes Kranz's skin crawl. The only person who looks at him, really looks at him, is Adair's wife. Her lips purse and her eyes widen but she's not quick enough. Mars hums across Adair's throat and carves through flesh and cartilage like butter.

Adair's wife shrieks in horror and an elbow catches Kranz in the ribs, shoving him away. Adair's body slumps forward, dripping red, and his wife leaps to her feet and shrinks into the corner. Kranz is suddenly grateful for the noise of a train and the confined space which, he realises, is why not one of them is carrying a gun.

A fist finds his jaw and he spins Mars in his hand, lifting the knife and sinking the blade into the man's neck. There's a gurgle and Kranz barely has time to pull Mars free before he's tackled to the ground and pinned there. Stars burst behind his eyes when his head slams against the metal floor. He blinks to clear his starry vision

_and it's baldor's hands on his shoulders and baldor's eyes glaring down at him and baldor's voice demanding answers_

_fingers dig into his brain and pull him away from himself away from __**baldor **__and his hands move even though he doesn't want them to and everything in him is screaming for it to stop so he can just get_

"Away!" he shouts and he barely even notices when his fists land blows on the man's face. He fights in a blind panic, Mars buzzing and dripping blood, because he will not go back to that time and place, he _refuses._

He only stops when Adair's wife is on his back, yanking on his collar. He pauses, breathing coming heavy and ragged, and his heart hammers in his throat. He can feel a bruise rising up on his cheek and ringing his eye. The man stares with blank eyes at the ceiling with a face stained with blood and bruising; his throat is a bloody hole. He whirls on Adair's wife.

"You killed my husband!" she wails and her hands are clotted with gore, "You killed him!"

Why do people feel the need to tell him things he already knows? He looks to her empty hands; why does she think she can face him without anything to even try and defend herself?

She doesn't even have time to scream before he grabs hold of her, drawing Mars across her neck. Her body folds and crumples with fear frozen onto her face. Her blood is hot and thick on his hands.

He steps back away from her, shrinking into a corner, Mars swinging loosely from his fingers. He's never liked the real act of killing; the satisfaction comes from the completion of the work itself, in the knowledge that he's fulfilled orders, that he's living for a purpose, even if that does mean living to eliminate someone else's enemies.

Not this time. Not anymore. He feels sick and hollow because _Creed _took that purpose and he _twisted_ it and _mangled_ it to make Kranz his own.

He sinks to the ground, curling into himself, his fingers digging in to his scalp. There's a sick feeling clawing at his chest and he tries to pull himself back, to remember how he felt when it was Chronos he worked for,but there are phantom hands on his neck and his shoulders, running through his hair

_you did well kranz and creed's voice is smooth and level and his hands are soft on kranz's neck because he doesn't stop __**touching **__even when Kranz says no even when he pulls away_

His own rasping breaths in his ears

_you always do so well_

A shaking in his limbs that he can't control

_my very own chronos number_


	2. keeps breaking your heart

**A/N. Jesus. I'm really sorry for this ending; I lost control there. Also, warning, this chapter includes references to sexual assault, along with the past threat of it. This chapter can be ignored if you're not comfortable with it. Trust me, it made me feel dirty even writing the bits that reference it; I bathed in bleach afterwards.**

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A quiet hand on his shoulder yanks him out of his headspace with a violent jerk. He brings Mars up but the woman who'd touched him topples back, landing with a panicked thud on the floor. The train rumbles beneath both of them as it cleaves through the country side. For a long moment, the pair of them stare at each other, Kranz clutching Mars like a lifeline and her staring with a face as white as snow.

She's naked, and she curls her knees up to her chest and tugs her long blonde hair over her shoulders to try and hide herself. She regards him with wide, scared eyes and Kranz can't help but see his mother in her fair features.

"You killed them," she says, licking dry cracked lips. She grimaces, "You killed them all."

She shifts slightly and it's then that he sees the blood between her legs and the bruises on her hips.

His blood rises in anger

_he can hear a woman sobbing in the cell across the hall and his guards just mock her and when they turn and see him grimace they grab hold of a handful of his hair tipping his head back_

_you want it to_

_a knife runs up the length of his throat_

_because we can work you over just as well_

_he fixes them with the same glare he gives creed when creed just won't stop __**touching **__him _

_and you know sometimes the girls just aren't enough_

They'd raped her

_he's being made to stand outside of number x's cell and it's the day before his execution and he digs his nails into the palms of his hands_

_they've left the door open a crack and he can hear every one of their moans every one of number x's pained groans and each and every sick horrible sound of the guards taking their pleasure_

They'd **raped **her_._

"They hurt you," the woman says, and it's nowhere near a question.

"Yes." He gives her an answer anyway.

"And that's why you killed them."

"Yes."

She spits a foul taste from her mouth and drags her hand across her mouth, "Will you kill me too?"

She's a civilian. He'd been told not to touch civilians, "No."

She heaves a sigh and he can't tell if it's relief or something else entirely. She's a civilian; he doesn't know what to do with civilians. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wondering what Heartnet would do.

Kranz stands and he manages to quell his shaking long enough to shrug his jacket off, rolling up the gore-clotted sleeves and dropping it over her shoulders. She flinches away from the weight of it but her fingers curl around the lapels, holding it around her shoulders. The carriage is starting to reek with the stink of blood and every nastiness associated with death.

"What did they do to you?" she asks when he cracks open one of the suitcases and rifles through it. He ignores her, digging through clothes to pull up false passports and other papers, all of the forged. He discards them all on the bloodied floor and shoves the suitcase away.

"Here," he says, opening the second suitcase and finding what he was looking for. He kicks it towards her, "Have your pick. Except." He snatches out one that is white and festooned with red roses, "This one."

He turns his back on her and twists the fabric of the summer dress in his hands. He hates roses.

The cotton tears in his hands and he throws it aside. While the woman dresses behind him, he rummages through the pockets of Adair and his dead men, drawing out wallets. He separates the cash from cards and turns when she coughs.

"Take this," he says stiffly, pushing the money into her hand, "And get off on the next station. Go to the police, go home, go to some far off corner of the globe, I don't care." His grip tightens on her wrist, "Forget that you ever saw me."

She looks at him with fear in those bright blue eyes and he lets her go again. He retrieves his jacket and retreats to the corner again so he can't be seen when she opens the door to go.

"Come with me," she says when the train pulls to a stop. He shakes his head; Sephiria had said the same thing, with the same tone.

"I can't."

She says nothing else, just steps gingerly off of the train and into the bright sunlight that pours in through the open door, slamming it behind her. He's alone again and he leans his head against the wall behind him, his nose clogging with the stink of the carriage.

He's fine.

This is nothing he hasn't done before.

He looks down again and all he can see is _roses _and he has to fight down the urge to be sick because _creed had had roses and it was in the rose garden that he was ordered to bring baldor in and no no he can't but there are already fingers digging into his mind_

He retches on the floor and all that comes up is a thin, watery yellow bile. He drags a sleeve stiff and stinking with dried blood across his mouth.

Les Ses Leura can't come fast enough. He fights to keep himself calm, to keep it from looking like he's fleeing a carriage filled with carnage. He stuffs Mars into his pockets and it's only the feel of the smooth blade, the curve of the handle that keeps him from collapsing into a relieved ball on the platform. The station is a bombed out ruin and the air still smells burnt.

He's grateful for that burnt smell as he slams the door shut. While fire had taken Chronos, it had also burnt away everything that Creed and the Doctor had built on that forsaken island. Kranz remembers standing and breathing in the smoke that stank of chemicals even when he'd been warned to stay back because he'd thought that the fire could burn it _all_ away.

It hadn't and that was when he'd turned to his list, to his "_until."_

He walks along the platform, passing collapsed pillars and piles of rubble, and he keeps his head down to hide the blood smeared across his face. He walks and he keeps walking because now the burning is starting to bring back memories of Chronos and he hates it and he refuses to be dragged down by his memories, as if he's weak and pathetic and can't handle a few bad moments.

He climbs the hill to the cracked war memorial and sits at its base to wait. He looks over the ruined city, the singed wind licking through his hair, and waits. His list comes to mind.

He can keep chasing shadows. For how long he doesn't know.

Until Baldor comes to find him

_and baldor looks at him with such hate in his eyes and something breaks in his chest and he wants to scream i didn't mean it baldor you have to believe me __**i'd never do this to you**_

Until Sephiria contacts him

Until his vision goes

Until he dies

Until he's

_no longer needed_

_**until**_


End file.
